270 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
cess, who was so enraged that she forced her father to make war against the Jews, to 
humble their pride. 
The victors at the Tsthmian games held at Corinth were crowned with garlands of 
pine branches. The cones were used by the Romans to flavour their wines, being 
thrown into the vats and suffered to float—a custom which is still in existence in Italy. 
Hence the thyrsus or wand of Bacchus terminates ina fir cone. The pine appears to 
have been held sacred by the Assyrians. Mr. Layard tells us that on the sculptures 
discovered by him during his excavations at Nimrond, the ancient Nineveh, there are 
many representations of figures bearing fir cones. Tennyson’s lines in “The Com- 
plaint of @inone” are familiar to many readers :— 
“O mother! hear me yet before I die: 
They came, they cut away my tallest pines, 
My dark tall pines, that plumed the craggy ledge. 
High over the blue gorge, and all between 
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract, 
Foster’d the callow eaglet, from beneath 
Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn 
The panther’s roar came muffled while T sat 
Low in the valley. Never, never more 
Shall lone CEnone see the morning mist 
Sweep through them—never see them overlaid 
With narrow moonlit slips of silver cloud 
Between the loud stream and the trembling stars.” 
Gerarde states that these trees are “so full of a resinous substance that they burn 
like a torch or linke,” and that they were therefore called “ firre wood” and “fire 
wood.” 
SPECIES IL—PINUS PINASTE R. Ait. 
Pirate MCCCLXXXI. 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et Helv. Vol. XI. Tab. DXXV. Fig. 1182. 
P. maritima, Lam. Fl. Fr. Vol. II. p. 201 (non Ait.) 
Leaves 2 in a fascicle, distributed all round the stem, long, rigid, 
channeled above, convex beneath, acute, pungent, cartilaginous- 
serrulate, scarcely glaucous. Anther-scale conspicuously prolonged 
beyond the anther-cells, and forming a denticulated crest. Cones in 
pairs or whorls of 3 to 7, rarely solitary, those of the year spreading, 
shortly stalked; mature cones elliptical-lanceolate-conical, recurved 
(or spreading-recurved when they are numerous in a whorl), acute, of 
very numerous scales; escutcheon of the scales much thickened, 
transversely rhombic, subpyramidal, with a transverse keel with a 
prominent centre and an erect point. Solid part of the seed one-fifth 
of the length from the base of the seed to the apex of the wing; wing 
pale along the outer curved margin, but with fuscous longitudinal 
stripes from the straight inner margin to beyond the middle. 
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